“Four years ago, he was just some Swedish kid named Tim who liked messing around on his laptop at home,” writes Jessica Pressler in her lengthy profile ‘The King of Oontz Oontz Oontz’, featured in the current issue of GQ. “One iTunes-dominating dance hit (‘Levels’) later, he’s Avicii, world’s hottest DJ, making $250,000 a night to keep the Ecstasy-dosed, champagne-soaked masses moving.”
For one typically frenetic week in the Swedish producer’s life, Pressler trailed along, observing what went down at XS in Las Vegas, the Lights All Night festival, Mamita’s Beach Club in Mexico and Story in Miami, to name just a few stops. Writing as an outside observer for a magazine not regularly dipping its toe into dance music, GQ’s scribe seems, at times, baffled and amused by the life of a superstar DJ.
As it turns out, neither Avicii nor his manager Ash Pournouri are at all impressed with how ‘The King of Oontz Oontz Oontz’, or the scene around him, is portrayed. “It’s a shame it turned out the way it did, that’s not at all who I am as a person or artist,” Avicii wrote to fans, suggesting the bad buzz of the article has travelled widely enough to warrant a rebuttal. “Whether it’s the short amount of time we spent together or the journalist’s lack of knowledge and experience with electronic music that led to this amount of misquotes and weird interpretations, I dont know. I just hope that my fans can see through all of it.” As you’ll see from his Tweets below, Pournouri was less diplomatic with his response. Then followed a lengthier comment from Avicii on his Facebook page in which he says of Pressler “she failed miserably” on the promise of showing the “serious” side to EDM.
One of those “misquotes” that Avicii highlights is about his approach to DJing. As Pressler writes: “Most of the set list and transitions are worked out before he gets onstage. The notion of a DJ who determines what to play by reading the room ‘feels like something a lot of older DJs are saying to kind of desperately cling on staying relevant.’”
This section of the profile raised criticism from A-Trak (“I think Avicii makes great music. Sincerely. But if you play the same thing every night you’re not a DJ”) and other peers, before Avicii responded on Twitter: “I didnt say any of that, it’s all out of context and phrased in a way that makes me sound oblivious.”
By this stage, A-Trak had elaborated on his Facebook page. “He also complains about opening djs who play the same big songs from his set…which are the same songs everyone else plays. So if I understand correctly, DJs should be robots and each pre-planned robot should know their place…?
“Some dudes live in a bubble and think what they hear in bottle service clubs and at festivals is DJing. That’s just entertainment. Enjoy the entertainment, I play at those spots too. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit creative though.”
The GQ feature also documents all the free-flowing champagne, fat pay-packets, VIP areas and snarkiness that apparently accompanies life in the DJ top-tier. Flashy nightclubs, it seems, don’t seduce the writer either, with lines like: “By four thirty, the girls shimmying on tables have come to resemble Depression-era marathon dancers, all bloody blisters and smeared eye make-up.”
Avicii addresses these passages in his Facebook counter-argument: “She draws up this disgusting picture of the electronic music crowd being constantly high, ugly, uneducated, dumb and ‘douche-y’, while I feel they are caring, loving, positive and the complete opposite of what she says. Sure people do drugs and party but that is nothing exclusive to this music genre. It looks like the journalist wanted the GQ readers to buy into that stigma.”
Dance music’s Twitter-chronicler-in-chief Tommie Sunshine is in Avicii’s corner on this: “This is where the press starts to try to dismantle us; we must choose our words wisely.” Read the story here (6-pages long) and see what you think of it all. One thing’s for sure: the DJ’s camp is going to be wary about who gets an interview from here on in.
So there's an @Avicii article in @GQMagazine where he says his sets are completely pre-planned & reading the crowd is a thing of the past…—
DJ Canada (@atrak) March 29, 2013
@LaidbackLuke @atrak I didnt say any of that, its all out of context and phrased in a way that make me sound oblivious.—
Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 29, 2013
@tommiesunshine @LaidbackLuke @atrak this is exactly how i feel right now.—
Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 29, 2013
1/2 Any journalist who describes anything subjectively is not a reporter.Way to go @GQMagazine to have one of your's piss all over our genre—
Ash Pournouri (@AshPunani) March 30, 2013
2/2 "EDM" is NOT about drugs, alcohol and "douchiness". You should have sent someone with an open mind and not some prejudice tabloid writer—
Ash Pournouri (@AshPunani) March 30, 2013
via In The Mix